Auto Estrogen

If there is any doubt of the importance of the female auto consumer and her enormous buying power, one only has to look at the newest advertising campaign launched by Toyota to highlight its Camry. A top selling car, apparently among all except African American women, the manufacturer has launched a very expensive advertising campaign, which includes a digital reality program at www.iflookscouldkill.com.

I went over and took a look at the site since I am almost the demographic they’re targeting, professional African American women between the ages of 25 and 40. My goal was to do some “market research”, which prompted me to stay a while, but I’ll admit, I didn’t get it. I couldn’t help but think, I have more important things to do, which I imagine others might be thinking because women are busy. And while statistics have shown that women are online more, they tend to go online for research as opposed to other things like playing games. But I don’t know, like I said I’m almost their demographic.

I can’t imagine women getting that excited about this game. And I really can’t imagine women getting so excited about a fictional character named Bianca who happens to drive; you guessed it — a Camry, that they start running out to buy them.

I’m just wondering if the manufacturers are getting it wrong. Wouldn’t it be a tad easier to pull together a focus group of this same demographic and find out why they see the Camry as “boring and suburban” and what might make the car more appealing? But maybe they did that. I don’t know. The bottom line is, I just can’t imagine a group of my peers saying, “I was online playing this reality game and I’m really thinking about buying a Camry”.

But there are two things we have to remember. 1. This is the first time Toyota has targeted African American women and 2. This is the first time I’ve been online to play a reality game. Could be we’re both wrong.